San Francisco Part Two

Once we arrived back to San Fran from wine country we set out like true tourists and hit most all the spots that we had on our agenda. We checked into our cute little hotel, Hotel Mark Twain, dumped our stuff off and made the trek to Chinatown. The three of us were beyond excited to start exploring and then we hit the hills. THE HILLS!!!

Seattle has some hills, believe me, but San Fran has hills that are so steep you feel like you might fall backwards when you walk up them. The San Franciscans are smart though and walk on their toes when climbing one of the many monster mini mountains. I took notes. None the less we still walked 99% of our adventures and only cabbed it when absolutely necessary.

 

Before returning our sweet convertible we stopped at a look out spot (1,5.) on the other side of the water from the city. When we finished with our food in Chinatown the three of us walked all the way to the worlds crookedest (their term, not mine :-) street: Lombard street (2,3). I don't know why anyone would want to actually drive down it. You're barely moving the entire time on a street jam packed with other cars and pedestrians. No thanks. We continued our walk because it was all down hill once we got to Lombard street. Might as well go down when you just hoofed it up a huge hill! I couldn't believe how much there was to look at. Including the gorgeous trees and flowers (4).

 Our hours long walk (1) led us to our next stop: Fisherman's Wharf. It was such a gorgeous sunny day, but wayy too cold for my liking on the water (4). We stopped at Ghiradelli (2,3) and had a delicious coffee with free chocolates. That place was PACKED, and I hate being in a place that is almost to capacity so we got the heck outta there and kept moving down the wharf. We did some trinket shopping and went into an empty looking wine bistro and drank and ate shrimp cocktails and bread :-)

 

Recognize the house in picture 5? I hope you do or else maybe we shouldn't be friends..This was absolutely a HUGE  highlight of my trip! Who didn't watch Full House growing up?! I can remember being a kid and my mom telling me that I better take my bath at that exact moment or I was going to miss watching Full House. Needless to say, I was in that bathtub before she could finish her sentence! Is it ridiculous that I still watch it when it comes on Nick at Nite?  Fun fact: we ran into a guy when we were taking pictures and he told us that the owners just put that gate up at the bottom of the stairs the week prior. One look at #Fullhousehouse on instagram and I knew why. People are all up on those stairs and standing at the front door taking pictures. Get serious people, let's have some respect. I think people forget that it's actually someones house. Which by the way, the house would NEVER fit the Full house layout in it. This place looks wayy tiny compared to how it looks in the show. I would love to know what the actual inside looks like. You can also see that the street (3) doesn't really seem fitting either. 

We also managed to make it over to the Mission District after we visited the Tanner's. We stopped in to La Cumbre (2) for burritos and beer. If you're a Man Vs. Food fan, then you'll remember that this was one of Adam's stops. It was really well priced and delicious. The burrito also came with chips that you could dip into all sorts of salsas that were at the salsa bar.

Overall it was a great trip. We got some nasty cold and rainy weather the last two days we were there so that deterred us from making it out to Alcatraz, but other than that we pretty much accomplished all we set out to do. We did so much walking, but I noticed after the fact that I was so occupied with all the sights around us that I didn't realize that we had walked two hours straight. The architecture is so different than Seattle, and the hills and city skyline also provided a welcome distraction. I think from the whole trip though, wine country was my favorite part. I'm in a city all the time so heading out to Mendocino county and slowing down was a great break from the norm.

A long weekend in San Francisco

Since last weekend was a long one, my friend Kitty (nickname, obvs) suggested that we go down to San Francisco for it a few months back. I hadn't been to San Fran since I was in middle school, and I like having trips to look forward to during this deployment so I thought it would be the perfect getaway. My friend L (who visited Seattle in December) expressed interest in going to San Fran, so I invited her to join us.

Us three ladies on the evening of our arrival to San Francisco

 We flew down on Friday evening, and hopped in this bad boy the next morning and cruised up to wine country to get our vino on.

Cruising up the 101 in a convertible Mustang is the way to do it, folks. There was some really good sights, and the driving was nice and easy once you get out of the hub bub of San Francisco, but not before passing over the massive Golden Gate Bridge. It's one of those landmarks that seems way bigger than you would imagine.

Our ending destination was Hopland, CA. This small town used to be known for it's cultivation of hops for beer. However, a natural mold started spreading among the hops and it wiped them all out. The town ended up just throwing in the towel on the hop growing and switched to wine. The 101 goes right through the little town and it is FULL of tasting rooms and lots of wineries are sprinkled near by as well. I drink a decent amount of wine, specifically red, and this small little town has some of the BEST wine I have ever tasted. On top of the deliciousness of the wine-it's SUPER cheap to purchase bottles. I think the most I paid for a bottle was under $20.

All our wine bottles purchased

My little brother lives in Northern California so he met up with us for wine 'drankin. He hasn't done wine tasting since he moved to California so I was glad he was able to join us. The little broski and I have gotten closer in the last few years so I had a really good time hanging out with him. I believe we made it to four tasting rooms which all (but one) gave free tastings. They were not stingy one bit either! You were always able to try all the wines you were interested in. I think the great part about Mendocino county is that it isn't as well known as Napa or Sonoma Valley is. Therefore you get less people, and better pricing on wine. I definitely could have spent another day or two there checking out all the wineries near by.

After all the wine, we grabbed some delicious pizza and Italian food, fireside, at a restaurant located just steps from where we had been hanging out for the past few hours. We had an early night. Drinking wine all afternoon is always so tiring so we made our way back to the hotel. It was decided that we would get up the next morning, grab breakfast in town, have a champagne tasting, and then drive back south to San Francisco.

 Next up is part two of San Francisco weekend...